Vienna Nocturne
Page 24
She held his elbow, blinking quickly, not moving her head but casting her eyes toward the river. The sun was rising by remarkable degrees. A moment ago it had been night. Now it was almost day. There could be no denying it was almost day. Here she stood with her companion outside a jail. The horses snorted and jingled their traces. The air was still damp. Spring was coming to Vienna. Already the day was lighter. Already it was bringing her closer to that thing she had been denying, all these days and nights with Barnard and the rest. She had thought she was embracing truth but she’d only been cloaking herself more firmly against it. There was a reason she was not usually out of doors at this hour of the morning. Unrelenting light—it came so quickly—it changed the world as it had always done. She stood gazing to one side, feeling her quick, shallow breaths, the hand at her elbow.
“Two days, Henry,” she said. “I have two days.”
“Oh, I should daresay you have a good many more days than that. Look, my dear, if you don’t want to go in—”
She shook her head. “I do.”
They found Stephen curled on a pallet in the corner of a cell. Lidia was already there, talking to him in a low voice. He held her hand through the bars. It seemed they liked each other. They had conspired together during Anna’s illness; they sometimes went for walks. One afternoon Anna had happened upon them playing music in the drawing room and had withdrawn before they could notice her.
In his rumpled formal garments Stephen looked the picture of a dissolute young nobleman, although he was nothing of the kind. He seemed to have been dozing. Barnard hung back with a handkerchief to his nose. Anna knelt beside Lidia.
“You should be in bed,” he said in Italian. “My dear lady Lidia, how could you let your mistress come to such a place as this?”
“I would have come alone but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Not alone!” He cradled his forehead in his hand. “Neither of you should be here. This is no place for ladies.”
“We have Lord Barnard to protect us,” said Anna.
He peered at Barnard and switched to English. “If I had any paper I could sketch my companions here. See how that man hunches on his rolled-up cloak against the dove-colored wall? It should make for a pretty picture. Do you remember how I used to draw circles in the ground as a trick?” He withdrew his hand from Lidia’s. “See, I will draw one now. Come take a look at this, Barnard. Is it not a pretty circle?”
“Indeed, my good man, the best circle I ever have seen drawn in the muck of a prison floor.”
“The muck of life, Barnard. I always said I wanted to see the inside of a Viennese cell before I died. Or if I didn’t say it, I should have. I reckon they wanted to give me a proper dispatch. Or perhaps this is their way of trying to keep me here. Well may they try—I shan’t waver.”
His eyes landing on Anna, his expression altered and he leaned forward. “Are you quite all right, sister? You look as though you’ve broken your voice again. You haven’t, have you? You’re not ill? The concert on Friday must go on—it will raise thousands of florins if we’re lucky. They’ll let me out in a day or two. I shan’t miss it.”
Anna smiled. “You poor fool, striking an officer.”
“Lord,” he groaned, “what a bastard. With his spurred boots.” He rested his head on the wall. “I thought he’d hurt you. I can’t stand the thought of you being hurt, Anna.”
“It was dashing,” she said. “It was brave. Wasn’t it, Lidia?”
“No,” said Lidia, in Italian, looking at Stephen sternly. “It was foolish.”
He shrugged. “Now here I am,” he said, also in Italian, “to meditate upon the muck.”
“What have you discovered?” Lidia asked.
He laughed and rubbed his eyes. “It’s not so bad. It’s not so different being in chains than out where you are. I’m the same man, am I not? With the same heart, the same lungs? And yet how awful to see these bars between us, denying me from you, from all the world. For the bars are always there, are they not? It’s only a question of awareness.” He ran his fingers along them. “It’s music takes them down, music the great leveler, like death.” He squinted at his sister and said in English, “See that I get out of here soon, won’t you? Funny how quickly one feels oneself becoming maddened.”
“It’s the wine,” she said soothingly. “And you haven’t slept.”
“And you,” he said to Lidia in Italian, “calling me a fool. You’d have struck the bastard, too.”
Lidia lifted her chin. “Yes.”
“Made his nose bleed.”
“Of course.”
He laughed. “Good. Let me try to sleep. Good-bye, sister. Good-bye, Barnard.”
“Your brother needs a wife and a profession,” said Barnard as they were leaving. “You’re all he has, is what I mean, and that’s a damned shame.”
Anna looked away. “And he’s all I have.” She didn’t want to be here, with this strange man. Here was not where she belonged.
“No,” Barnard said, and gave her a probing kiss. “Not you. You have everything you desire.”
“Do you like my brother, Lidia?” Anna asked later, when they were alone.
Lidia was silent a moment. “Of course. He’s everything a man should be.”
Anna laughed. “I always thought you loved me.”
Lidia smiled placidly and hugged Anna around the shoulders. Her face was smooth and warm as polished wood. “I do. You are both everything you should be.”
Amato Bene
The day of Anna’s benefit concert, and farewell to Vienna, had all the feeling of a grand public ceremony—a state wedding, coronation, or funeral—and all for her. One could not find a ticket for love or money. She was more beloved, now that she was leaving, than she had ever been. The attention and gratitude of an entire population fell upon her.
Stephen had been released in time for their departure and after an urgent bath was napping off his hardship on the third floor. Anna had told Barnard she did not wish to see him before this evening. After that she must see him, because they were traveling together. He had finished his European tour and was called back to England. There was no sense in traveling without Barnard, much as it was distasteful to her now. Everything was planned. Michael would go with them, too, to visit his family in Ireland. But Anna could not think of Barnard or Michael or anything but the concert. She would be singing her most popular songs, a few duets, and the aria with Mozart. It would be a retrospective of all she had been to Vienna.
When it was time for the performance her legs weakened and her hands developed a faint tremor. She smoothed them on her skirt and did not resist. The only way to confront such fear was to release resistance entirely; accept her frailty, all the terrors and disasters her imagination could conjure; accept them by releasing her bonds of defense; by allowing herself to collapse into them and not run away. Then her knees became strong and firm. Then her lungs opened and let in the good air, the air that sustained life and sound, and her quarreling thoughts were quieted.
The concert went well. More than well. Then, at last, it was time for the final aria, Mozart’s aria, their farewell.
She came off stage and found him waiting in the dark of the wings. He wore his red coat. The collar brushed his jaw. Light from the stage slightly struck his nose and cheek. She embraced him.
“Hello,” he said quietly. “Are you ready?”
The orchestra was tuning. His piano waited in their midst, at the front of the stage, the lid removed. He would lead them from his seat.
“Not in the least,” she said. She smiled bravely. “Once we begin it will be over.”
He caressed her shoulder. “If we don’t begin we’ll have nothing to remember.”
“What if I don’t want to remember?”
He tightened his arms around her and put his lips to her ear. “Then you’re a stranger to me.”
She whispered, “It will go too quickly.”
“No, Anna. As slowly as we wish.”
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“My wish is too great—we’ll be dead by the end of it.”
“We can’t die. There is no end.”
The orchestra was ready. It rustled and waited. The audience waited and murmured.
In the wings of the Burgtheater Mozart and Anna held each other. “Now,” he whispered. “Now we begin.”
Non temer, amato bene; per te sempre il cor sará. “Don’t fear, greatly beloved; for you, always, my heart will remain.” She wanted to laugh, singing it, for it was no more an aria than the last he’d written her—it was a duet, a concerto, an intimate meeting place for themselves alone. He had created for himself an obbligato part so entwined with her voice that it almost seemed it was her voice, that she was spilling into the air from his fingers, all silver and light, and dissolving again in the sweet curl of his ear. They teased and celebrated each other. They spun their hopes into a golden ball and tossed it hand to hand. The notes of the piano tickled her neck and lapped at her toes. Her voice, as he had written it, became a bed for him to lie on, as tender as new moss, and the stream was theirs, as well, and the bright cheerful buttercups, and the air filled with bees and warm fragrance. This was play. This, forever, was the play of their life. When it was over, in the piercing space between the music and the applause, she heard him whisper, “Brava.”
There was not time to recover. They must go to the reception in the great, mirrored hall, with the patrons and colleagues and dignitaries; must smile and converse with everyone as though nothing had changed. In an hour or two Anna would leave Vienna. Everything was packed and waiting. They would drive through the night to reach Salzburg by morning.
Benucci kissed her and promised to visit her in London. He had always wanted to go to London. Da Ponte said he wanted to visit her as well. Aloysia Lange embraced Anna and said it had been quite a pretty concert and they would be so sorry to see her go. Constanze said nothing. Dorotea and Luisa burst into tears. Mandini, stern-faced, kissed her on the cheeks five times and told her with a firm shake of her shoulders that she should not forget them.
The Count and Countess Thun had gifts, gold and jewels. The emperor, with an air of long-suffering resentment, offered a box of chocolate and some hundreds of florins. He had circles under his eyes and his breath was bad. Earlier in the week he had given Anna a letter to take to his sister, Marie Antoinette, whose country was tottering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Anna was so surrounded by well-wishers that she could say nothing of meaning nor let slip from her tired cheeks the smile of graciousness and gratitude that held there as if under a siege of trivial beneficence. Mozart was entertaining his own crowd, as if she were not there. She could not go to him, nor could he come to her; there was too much between them. She caught his eyes, across the room, and he smiled and brought his fingers to his lips. But at that moment Lord Barnard was upon her. “The carriages are ready,” he said. “If we don’t go now we’ll never make it.”
Mozart and his wife were with Michael and her brother. “Time to go?” asked Stephen.
She could not breathe. It was happening too quickly. “Lord Barnard says so.”
“Well,” said Stephen. “Isn’t this awful.”
Mozart gave a short laugh. The mirrors shone about them.
“It was so moving,” Constanze said. “Truly I think all of us shed a tear. That rondo theme, Wolfgang, that was so tuneful and kept coming back—”
“Alme belle,” he said. He looked at Anna and translated the text for his wife into German: “ ‘You beautiful souls, who see my pain in this moment, tell me if any heart has suffered such torment as this.’ ”
“Is that what it means?” asked Constanze. “But the melody was so pretty, so light, so hopeful!”
“Then I did well,” he said. He glanced at her with a smile and then looked back at Anna. “For you see that’s the torment of love—so light, so hopeful, when still she must go away.”
“But you’ll come back, won’t you?” said Constanze with a warm look at Anna and Stephen. “Or we shall come to you.”
“Yes,” said Stephen cheerfully. “We hope to have you come to London.”
They could not say good-bye like this. Not like this. Mozart’s eyes were wet and urgent, and she knew it was because he was trying at the last to fix in his memory the image of her face. Her voice, her touch, her smile. As she was trying to do with his.
At half past two in the morning of February 23, 1787, Anna Storace climbed into a four-horse carriage lined with furs and velvet and bade farewell to Vienna.
Letters
Letter from Joseph II to
Anna Storace, August 1788
My dear Madam,
As you may have heard, we are at war with Turkey. Therefore have I dissolved my opera company. In any case, madam, as I told you once before, there is no employment for you here.
His Excellency, etc,
Joseph Hapsburg
Letter from Francesco Benucci to
Anna Storace (extract), October 1789
Yes, the buffa troupe has been taken back into the fold and our Figaro revived. They’ve got Da Ponte’s mistress singing your Susanna. Blowsy voice, no art. Mozart’s had to rewrite your arias. Now they’re showpieces. For myself it’s like making love to a fondue. Pity me. And Stephen is marrying your maid? Well, I always liked her, though she had no good opinion of me. Congratulations all.
FB
Letter from Robert May O’Reilly, London impresario, to Anna Storace, November 1790
Madam,
Having heard through your brother of Wolfgang Mozart’s desire to undertake a journey to England, I have offered to commission him to compose two operas for the coming season in London, at a generous fee of three hundred pounds. I regret to inform you that he has refused me. His wife, he says, is ill. Perhaps we may try him again in the next year.
Robert O’Reilly
Letter from the Countess von Thun und Hohenstein to
Anna Storace, December 1791
My sweet girl.
By now you will have heard the black news. We all of us are in shock. When they told me I refused to believe. “That cannot be,” I said. “It cannot be that I am living, I who have no use in the world, and Wolfgang Mozart is dead.” It is dark here—we have not seen the sun—it rains and snows and all of us rage at the sky and it does no good. He was sick in November but I did not think it would come to this. What have we lost, dear Anna?
You’re weeping now, and it’s all my fault. I should be grieving in my diary, not to you, who loved him best of all. I know you did. I said nothing but I always knew. I cannot console you.
I can see no good in this world. Wrap yourself in your memories. Sing for him, when you can. They say he knew he was dying.
Now the sun is coming out, stealing across my dreadful words at day’s end. I want to tear the page. I feel myself crazed. Is this my hand? He was surrounded by friends and his little family. The baby boy! I can’t think of it. Why am I writing when it will only cause you pain? Hateful sun—you come too late—you are cold, you mock us, you are gone again. The snow piles.
A day will come when I will have concerts in our house as we used to. Then I will listen to his music and there find solace. Even now I think of the two of you, how you delighted in each other. There my drowning spirits are revived. Let yours be so as well.
With sisterly love, in great hardship,
Countess Maria Wilhelmine von Thun und Hohenstein
Epilogue
In June 1801, the promising young English tenor John Braham arrived in Vienna with his lover and collaborator, the soprano Anna Storace, at the end of their four-year musical tour of the Continent. He had met her when her brother, now deceased, had hired him as principal tenor at the Drury Lane theater, where Anna sang. He and Anna had studied with the same teacher. She had an estranged husband who was also named John. They laughed about that sometimes. Although Braham was just beginning his career and Anna was ten years older, it didn’t seem to matter.
It was just the same, she said. That was what she’d said of nearly every place they’d visited. Her hand on his arm was rigid. Braham patted it and looked affectionately into her face. Now when she talked of the past he would know where it had happened, be able to journey there with her. He could almost see the past crossing her features now, in this park in Vienna, the past revealing itself to him with more candor and detail than it ever had in her stories. The pretty movement of her dear brown eyes, the furrow in her brow, told all. And there, finally, came a crystal tear.
“You’re crying,” he said. He loved the vividness of her emotions, her passions, rages, and ecstasies. He often thought someone should paint her in one of her passions.
Anna wiped her cheeks and looked away. She was going to sit on the bench by the lilacs, she said. She wouldn’t be half an hour. He might walk in the garden until she was ready. Then they would go see the Thun und Hohensteins and he would sing for them.
“And you, as well, my love?”
Her face was pale. No, she said. She had something in her throat. She could not sing today. The countess would understand.
He left her, as she wished, and paced the orderly gravel paths of the park. The Prater, it was called. They were in a secluded square ringed with trees. She sat by the lilacs. The flowers waved about her. The ribbons on her hat rippled in the air. A blustery day, with gray light. Braham watched her carefully as he strolled the garden paths, but for all the warmth of his attention she did not move or call to him. Drawing out his watch, he saw that it had not been ten minutes. Half an hour, she’d said. Twenty-two minutes to go. He resolved not to disturb her before she was ready. After all, he loved her. He could spare her half an hour.